Watch hockey? Follow every match that matters!

The Netherlands is a hockey nation, and that means there is far more to watch than the Olympic final or a European Championship every few years. Every week there is competition, from your own club on a Saturday morning to the national top on a Sunday afternoon and the international arena above it. Yet many fans do not always know where to follow what, because the offering is spread across different channels, streaming services and apps. And that offering is shifting: while the big tournaments are still partly free to watch on public broadcasting, weekly club hockey and the Hoofdklasse are mostly behind a paywall.

Whether that is a fair trade-off between the commercial value of the footage and the pulling power that free viewing brings, is the question. But perhaps we are simply being too frugal here and should just pay to watch all the great hockey from behind the screen? Do you have an opinion on it? Then leave a comment at the bottom of this article!

Either way, this dossier answers the key question: where do you watch the hockey that matters?

Starting with a short overview of the landscape and then moving from local to the highest competitive level. First your own club and the regional competitions, then the national top, next the Dutch national team and the world elite with the World Cup as the crown jewel, European club hockey and the competitions outside Europe. We close with a comparison of every channel and service and with tips to get the most out of it at home and on the go. That way, by the end you will not only know where to watch the World Cup hockey in August, but how never to miss a match all year round.

Where can you watch hockey?

Before we go into detail, here is the big-picture overview. Watching hockey runs via five main routes, and which one you need depends on what you want to see.

The public broadcaster (NOS and NPO) is the free home base for the big national-team moments: the World Cup, the European Championship, the Olympic Games and the Dutch matches in the Pro League, plus the finals of the Hoofdklasse play-offs and a selection of the European club finals. In whole or in part. Viaplay is the paid route for the weekly club hockey of the former Tulp, now Staatsloterij Hoofdklasse.

Watch.Hockey, the platform of the world governing body FIH, unlocks the international matches worldwide, including the full Pro League and a pass for the World Cup. EuroHockeyTV is the place for the European club tournament, the EHL. And at club level you will find the matches and highlights of your own club via Eyecons and hockey.nl.

The bottom line: you can follow part of the Dutch national team's matches perfectly well via the NPO, which also broadcasts some Hoofdklasse matches. You will often find these to watch back on YouTube too. The rest… is mostly behind a paywall. Let's take a more detailed look:

Watching hockey at your own club: local and regional

Following hockey does not start with the national team, but on your own pitch. For most fans that is also where the weekly enjoyment lies: the club's first eleven, the regional derby, the talents you watched grow up. More and more clubs are broadcasting their home matches live, and the main place to find them is Eyecons, the video platform where hockey.nl and countless clubs have their channel. You watch live or afterwards, from Hoofdklasse highlights to matches of individual clubs.

In addition, hockey.nl itself provides coverage around the national competitions, with live blogs, match reports and highlights on the site and in the app. For anyone watching a child play, wanting to scout an opponent or simply following their own club from a distance, this is the most accessible layer of the entire hockey landscape. The quality varies per club, but the threshold is low and much of it is free. It is precisely that accessibility that keeps grassroots sport alive, and it is the foundation beneath everything that follows.

Watching national hockey: the Staatsloterij Hoofdklasse

One level up lies the Staatsloterij Hoofdklasse (known up to and including the 2025/2026 season as the Tulp Hoofdklasse), the highest Dutch club competition and one of the strongest in the world, with women's and men's sides from clubs such as Bloemendaal, Amsterdam, Kampong and Den Bosch. Here lies the clearest paywall in Dutch hockey straight away: the rights lie exclusively with Viaplay, at least up to and including the 2026/2027 season. Without a subscription you do not see the weekly matches.

It is smart to know exactly what you get for that subscription, because the broadcast format has changed. Not every match can still be followed live individually. Each weekend one club double-header is broadcast fully live, the so-called Super Sundays (with the women at 12:45 and the men at 15:00), supplemented by a handful of Super Saturdays. There is also the switching programme 'The Switch', which jumps live between pitches and bundles the best actions, goals and saves of the entire round. For anyone wanting to follow one specific club that takes getting used to, to put it kindly. For anyone wanting to catch the whole competition in highlights, it is a godsend.

Watching for free is possible at the climax. The NOS broadcasts the play-off finals on NPO 1, and those are just about the only Hoofdklasse matches shown on open public broadcasting. The 2026/2027 season starts on Sunday 27 September 2026, with the play-off finals on 22 and 23 May 2027. Around the play-offs and play-outs, hockey.nl also provides live blogs, reports and highlights via its own channels and the YouTube channel of the Staatsloterij Hoofdklasse.

And don't forget the winter: when the pitches freeze over, top hockey moves indoors, where indoor hockey with its fast, compact play has its own competition and finals. It is an underexposed but rewarding part of the season for anyone who also wants to watch hockey in January and February.

Watching international hockey: the Dutch team and the world elite

Above club hockey stands the national side, and there watching hockey becomes a good deal more accessible again. The big national-team tournaments are exactly the moments when the sport briefly goes mainstream, and most of them are free.

The FIH Pro League, the ongoing national-team competition between the nine best teams per gender, is the thread running through the year. The winner even takes an Olympic ticket with it, now for Los Angeles 2028. All matches are live worldwide on Watch.Hockey; the NOS provides highlights and broadcast the Dutch blocks with TeamNL via livestream, partly on NPO 1. Note: this is no longer a Ziggo Sport product, which broadcast the Pro League until a few years ago. Anyone who knows the way to Watch.Hockey misses nothing.

For the European Championship, the Olympic Games and other national-team tournaments the NOS is traditionally the home base, with free livestreams on NOS.nl and in the NOS app alongside the broadcasts on the NPO channels. Last summer, for instance, the European Championship finals in Mönchengladbach were freely available to watch: the Dutch women took the European title there, while the men fell just short of gold after a lost final. That free stage matters, because a tournament everyone can see draws new viewers again the following year.

The crown jewel: watching the 2026 Hockey World Cup

And then the highlight of this hockey year. From 15 to 30 August 2026, the Netherlands and Belgium jointly host the Hockey World Cup. The Dutch matches are played at the Wagener Stadion in Amstelveen, which is temporarily expanded to just over 10,000 seats; the Belgian matches at the new Belfius Hockey Arena in Wavre, near Brussels. For only the third time in history the men's and women's tournaments coincide at the same venues, after Utrecht in 1998 and The Hague in 2014.

In sporting terms there is plenty to follow. Sixteen countries per gender play in four pools of four; both host nations play all their pool matches at home. The Dutch women, reigning world champions, face Australia, Japan and Chile in their group; the Dutch men take on Argentina, New Zealand and Japan. The tournament builds towards two showpieces: the women's final on Saturday 29 August in Amstelveen and the men's final on Sunday 30 August in Wavre.

For the viewing itself, the expectation is that the NOS takes the lead, as at earlier home World Cups and as the broadcaster also aired the Pro League block of the Dutch team this spring; the NOS will announce the exact channel allocation in the run-up. Worldwide, the FIH broadcasts every match via Watch.Hockey, with a special World Cup pass. On the Belgian side, Sporza/VRT and RTBF are expected to handle the broadcasts. A big advantage for the viewer at home: unlike the World Cups in India and Argentina, where matches fell in the middle of the night, all games are now played during the day or in the early evening. Anyone who prefers to be there in person can head to the stadium: ticket sales are running in phases via the official World Cup site, with day tickets and season passes. Demand is high: the men's final in Wavre is by now completely sold out, and other final days sold quickly in earlier phases too.

Watching European club hockey: the Euro Hockey League

Alongside the national sides, the best clubs on the continent compete in the Euro Hockey League (EHL), the hockey equivalent of the Champions League. In recent years the tournament has revolved around the EHL Finals, a festival held over Easter, in 2026 for the second year running at HC Den Bosch, with the men's and women's tournaments at the same time. Dutch clubs are traditionally strongly represented: among the men, Bloemendaal holds the record for titles, while Kampong claimed the tournament in 2026.

You can watch in two ways, and here too you see the tension return. Anyone wanting to see everything takes an EHL Finals Pass on EuroHockeyTV, which broadcasts every match live with English commentary. Anyone wanting to watch for free keeps an eye on the NOS, which broadcasts a selection of matches, usually the semi-finals and finals with Dutch participation, on NPO 1 and NPO 1 Extra plus livestreams on NOS.nl. So there is a complete paid package for the die-hard and, for the occasional viewer, a free window on the most important matches.

Bonus: watching hockey outside Europe

For anyone not yet sated after the European season, there is fine club hockey to follow on other continents too. A real counterpart to the EHL does not exist there, but the national flagship competitions are worth it, and thanks to international streams they are often perfectly reachable.

In India the relaunched Hockey India League (HIL) is the biggest club spectacle in Asia, played around the turn of the year and by now with its own women's competition. Outside India you follow the matches via the HIL's YouTube channel and the Waves platform. In Australia the franchise competition Hockey One runs from September to November, with both a men's and a women's tournament; international fans watch via the Hockey One Global Pass, where Dutch players can regularly be seen too. And in Malaysia, one of the strongest hockey nations in Asia, the TNB Malaysia Hockey League can be followed via the YouTube channel of the Malaysian Hockey Confederation. It is a nice way to discover playing styles and stars you will see again at the big tournaments.

Channels and streaming services compared

With so many routes, it helps to lay everything out. The table below compares the main options for watching hockey, with the emphasis on the question that runs through this whole dossier: do you watch for free, or is there a paywall?

So an occasional viewer has enough with the NOS. A Hoofdklasse fan cannot avoid Viaplay. And anyone who really wants to see everything internationally builds Watch.Hockey and, in spring, an EHL Finals Pass around that. Ziggo Sport, once a hockey channel, is no longer the go-to route for most competitions.

What does it cost? (indicative, price level July 2026)

The amounts below are a snapshot; always check the current rate with the provider, because streaming prices change regularly.

• NOS and NPO: free, because publicly funded.
• Viaplay: cancellable monthly at around 22 euros per month, or cheaper with a yearly subscription of 179 euros, which works out at roughly 15 euros per month; there is also a cheaper package with adverts. Note: Viaplay's future in the Netherlands is uncertain.
• NLZIET: from 7.95 euros per month for Basic, 9.95 euros for Premium; works throughout the EU.
• EuroHockeyTV (EHL Finals Pass): around 16 euros for the whole tournament.
• Watch.Hockey (FIH World Cup pass): a paid tournament pass; comparable FIH events cost around 20 dollars, the exact World Cup price was not yet public in mid-2026.

Tips for the best viewing experience

Where and how you watch makes a difference to the enjoyment. A few practical things help to get the most out of a match, whether you are at home on the sofa or on the go.

Start with a stable connection. High-quality livestreams require a solid internet connection, and for the really important matches a wired connection is more reliable than wifi. Nothing is as annoying as a stuttering picture during a decisive shoot-out. The screen also determines how much of the play you take in: on a large television screen you follow the tactical shifts across the whole pitch, something that is hard on a phone. If you watch on your laptop or tablet, casting via Chromecast or Apple TV is an easy way to use the big screen after all.

A second screen enriches the viewing. While the match is on, you keep track of the statistics on your phone via hockey.nl or Flashscore, and the TeamNL app sends a notification the moment a Dutch match begins, so you never miss a throw-off. And don't forget the social side: hockey has always been a club sport, and watching together heightens the tension. Around the World Cup, the fan zone at the Wagener Stadion offers a stage for that, but a match also comes to life better at home with friends.

If you watch abroad, the route depends on where you are. Within the European Union the NPO broadcasts remain reachable via NLZIET or via your own provider's app, such as Ziggo GO or KPN. Outside the EU, Watch.Hockey is usually the cleanest route to international matches, because that platform works worldwide. Using a VPN to access Dutch content may go against the terms of services, so that is at your own risk.

Watching hockey; free or paid?

Lay all the options side by side and the split stands out. The big national-team moments, the World Cup at home, the European Championship, the Olympics and the Dutch team's Pro League matches, are largely free, because the public broadcaster, KNHB and the world governing body deliberately make them widely accessible. The weekly club hockey and the Hoofdklasse, by contrast, sit behind a subscription, as does the full offering of the European and foreign competitions.

Free or paywall… We always wonder what benefits the sport most... Footage has commercial value, and selling it exclusively earns the competitions and federations money that they in turn put back into the sport. At the same time, hockey grows fastest when as many people as possible can simply see it: a free European Championship final or a World Cup on open television draws new fans, new members and new viewers to the club hockey below it. Free access is not only a favour to the viewer, it is also an investment in the next generation. What is the best trade-off? Let us know your verdict with a comment below!

For this summer that trade-off works out favourably. The 2026 Hockey World Cup comes to the Wagener Stadion and, as expected, will be broadly and freely available on Dutch television. It is the moment to show the sport to the widest possible audience, from the seasoned enthusiast to the neighbour who only knows the Olympic final.

Do you want to see every World Cup match and watch back the finest moments? Then go to watch.hockey.

And once you have had a taste of that top hockey, after this research you will know exactly where to find the rest all year round: on your own pitch, on a Sunday afternoon, and everywhere above it.

Prices and offerings last checked: 7 July 2026. Bookmark this page; as soon as the broadcast times become available for the World Cup, we will update this article!